Dragon Heart
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This is a bit different from my usual romance stories, and it came about because I saw a sponsored post on Ye Olde Instagram for a writing competition endorsed by Christopher Paolini (of Eragon fame). Unfortunately, it required a Vocal+ subscription and a Stripe account, neither of which I was prepared to set up for a writing competition, but I enjoyed the prompt and wanted to write it anyway. So, here it is.
Prompt: A grown dragon finds a lost — or abandoned — toddler in the forest. Write a fiction story about what happens next. Wordcount up to 5000 words.
It was not a morning for wandering about.
A choking mizzle shrouded the last fiery leaves of autumn, dousing their colour from bright copper to muddy brown, and gusts of wind chased the leaves from the branches like rabbits scattering before the snapping jaws of a wolf. Winter was getting ready to descend on the valley, and it was not a morning for taking a wander.
Still, he was hungry, and the deer would certainly be preoccupied at this time of year, forgetting all about their own safety in favour of all things amorous, so he had stretched his leathery, red-gold wings and beat at the air a few times before emerging from the warm belly of his mountain home to hunt in the valley below. Simply for the joy of it though, he flew up and up, pressing through the billowing layer of cloud until he broke through into he cold, clear blue of the aether above. An elegant barrel roll took him spearing back down through the fluffy, grey blanket wrapped around the world like sheep’s wool, and he left his ancient home behind.
The pillars of the dragon roost, the building that had been carved from the mountain itself by a people who no longer existed, could be seen from below on a fine day for fifty miles. His particular mountain was the vanguard in a battle-line of peaks that rose from the grassy river plain, with its slopes painted year round with oak and ash, beech, aspen, and birch which all set themselves ablaze each autumn with a riot of reds and gold that far outmatched the flames he was capable of creating.
Contrary to the ridiculous bards’ tales, he didn’t hunt with a great and gaudy gout of flame, and since he wasn’t as large as the dragons of legend, he could perfectly easily pluck a single deer from the grassy meadows beside the river, leaving only the ruffled grasses and an abruptly-ended trail of hoof prints as witness that he’d ever passed by.
That day of all days, he should simply have returned to his mountain after eating his fill of the local wildlife to curl into a cosy ball and sleep for at least a week, but he was a little thirsty, and the river was clear and the water sweet with eelgrass and late-blooming weeds.
Cupping his jaw through it like a beaker through a bowl of pale wine, he savoured the freshness. He could taste the last of the snow melt from his own mountain range in the valley’s clear water.
Just as the aspens and birch along the banks shivered at the thought of the snow that would soon be piling up in the foothills and mountains around the deciduous forest, he caught a soft mewling on the breeze.
With a frown, he raised his head, water dripping from his spine-studded jaws to splash and sparkle into the fast trout stream that flowed on heedlessly around his submerged feet. He cocked his head and turned, trying to catch the sound again. It was the wrong time of year for younglings of any species: the deer would fill the meadows with their wobble-legged fawns in the spring, and the wolves and bears would whelp over the winter in the secure privacy of warm dens while insulating snow piled up outside, and yet, that had certainly been the cry of something small and vulnerable and… frightened.
He caught it again and honed in on the sound, raising his snout and snuffing the air.
Human. The tiny creature was… human?
The long grasses, now thatched and tired and leached of all their nutrients by the blasting summer sun, swayed around him while he stood motionless, listening. The drizzle turned to a steady, sheeting rain, and the child’s whimpering became a yowling that made his heart crack to hear.
Nothing on earth should sound so hurt and so afraid.
With the cold water sluicing around his legs, he waded through the wide, rocky stream and came out on the other side, mindful where he put his feet in case he stepped on the child. Swaying his head from side to side, he followed the scent and kept his golden eyes wide for it, rumbling softly the way a dragon would to its hatchlings.
There, on the very edge of the clearing, he found it.
Wet, bedraggled, mud-streaked, and terribly cold, the child was kneeling in a puddle where it had presumably toppled over, with muddy hands splayed wide and half its face caked in mud, and big, fat tears in its round eyes.
When it spotted him, those eyes somehow got even wider, and it stared transfixed at him with its tiny mouth softly open. He lay down on his belly, bringing his chin to the ground, and exhaled softly.
He had no idea how to comfort a human. He had no idea how to care for a human. He’d never met a human, and until then, had had no desire to.
The nearest settlement was a two-day flight across the forest, even for him, but the Great Road wound through these mountains, and it was not uncommon for travellers to get lost from time to time. Perhaps that was how this little one had come to be here. Had it bounced off the back of a waggon like a forgotten apple? Could humans really be so careless with their children?
The child — he really had no idea how old it was or how quickly humans grew — levered itself up on unsteady arms until it was standing like a dog on all fours, with its bottom towarrds the sky, and he tried not to laugh in case he scared it more. It did look funny though. Then, determinedly, it furrowed its little brows, straightened, wobbled, and then toddled towards him.
When it was standing right in front of his nose, it put impossibly tiny hands just below his nostrils, and, as he exhaled again, it laughed.
The dragon blinked. The sound was like the first notes of spring after a slumbering, cold winter. The last remnants of tears in its reddened eyes slid down through the mud on its fat little cheeks, and it giggled. It tugged and pulled harmlessly at his soft-scaled nostrils, and experimentally, he huffed a short, hot breath at it. With a shriek of delight that dissolved into more bubbling giggles, the child patted him and drummed its little palms against the pale gold scales of his snout until he did it again.
After a while, the child began to shake and grumble though, and even the short-lived amusement of its new discovery was not enough to keep the tears of discomfort away, and it began to cry again.
“You must be hungry too, little one,” he sighed, though to a human it would have sounded like little more than a growling rumble of senseless syllables.
The dragon frowned, pushed himself upright, and reached his hand out for the child. Holding his clawed fingers open, he let the child climb boldly into his palm, and he walked on three legs back towards the stream. It didn’t take very long to clean the mud off its face, and then he headed towards the stone road that snaked through the land from Caerlon in the north to White Haven in the south. Someone would come along soon, and if they didn’t skewer the dragon on sight, they might take the child and care for it.
Curling his body up in the grassy meadow at the side of the road, he raised one wing like a tent over the child and let it curl up in his hand, his claws cradling it. There was no safer place to rest than beneath the arching roof of ivory talons and leathery wing, and, with his breath and the radiating heat from his chest to keep it warm, the child slept.
He rested his head on the road and waited.
Somewhere behind the ceiling of grey cloud that masked the heavens and continued to lash rain down on the forest, an intangible sun wheeled slowly through the sky, but the only life that emerged from the forest all day was a dog fox who gave them a wide berth, and a small group of skittish deer.
The tip of his tail tapped a tattoo on the road, only matched by the drum of the rain and the boom of the thunder beyond, and still the child slept.
He wondered how long it had been out there alone, and how on earth it had reached that meadow in the first place.
Finally, late in the afternoon, he heard a distant, desperate shout. A woman’s voice, high and frantic and cracking with desperate grief, yelled a name.
She staggered around a curve in the stone road, out of a stand of pale birch some way off, and he blinked, focusing on her as he came out of his half-doze.
She had the same colours in her hair and skin as did the child, and she wore a patched and faded woollen dress that had once been brightly dyed in yellow and gold with weld and madder, and an undyed apron was tied around her middle that was stained and ripped. She had mud up the hem of the dress, and her boots looked sturdy but waterlogged. At her belt hung a long knife and a leather pouch, and keeping her hair out of her eyes was a small band of undyed cloth.
She covered her mouth with her hands when she saw the dragon lying across the road, and when he extended his hand, slowly so as not to disturb the child, and retracted his clawed fingers to reveal its sleeping form, she screamed.
Her knees went out from under her and she bowed her head, sobbing.
Was she not pleased to have found her child? He rumbled in confusion, the sound carrying along the road like a distant shock wave, and she snapped her head up. He nudged his hand a little further towards her and chuffed. The sound woke the child and it squirmed and sat up, rubbing its eyes.
She called a name, and even at that distance, the child recognised its mother’s call. Floundering in its exhaustion, the little one wriggled out between his fingers and tottered along the road for only a few steps before it staggered and tripped.
He sighed and with the flash of his hand, he caught it with a huge curved claw around its middle and steadied it, setting it upright again before it scuffed its knees and hands on the road. Deciding it would be easier if he just took the child to the mother, he scooped it up with that same, hooked talon, and the child dangled and laughed, beating its hands against the ivory claw in amusement. The mother looked on in horror, but she stayed where she was as the dragon lowered the child down in front of her.
She blinked and took the child with numb, cold hands, crooning its name and caressing it with her cheek the way all mothers from wolf to eagle would claim their child, and he couldn't help the happy rumble that left him.
“Thank you,” she rasped, child hooked securely on her hip. “Thank you. You saved him. I don’t know if you can understand me, but thank you.”
He inclined his head and the child reached grabbing hands for him once more. Nosing carefully towards the little one, he exhaled slowly, and the child laughed.
It was the unexpected touch from the mother that surprised him though.
She pressed her palm to his snout, right between his nostrils, and placed a tear-stained kiss there.
The world flashed white for just a moment, and he froze.
He knew the stories and the songs.
All dragons knew them.
For generations, dragonlings had listened to their parents speak ancient rhymes of former friendship, and warnings of the enmity which had come to lie between two species that had once been so close that dragon roosts had been incorporated into the very architecture of the ancient cities. His own home was testament to that. From coast to mountain, grassland to tundra, forest and marsh, those rare dragons had bonded to humans and together they had ruled the whole world.
In days long since, and days long past,
When human heart joined dragon fast;
No bond was closer than these two,
Who on wide wings together flew.
Through touch and mind they spoke as one,
But now those days are spent and done.
Beware the spear! Beware the bow!
Beware the death that lives below!
But those were only legends; songs and stories used to warn dragons to stay far away from the humans who had turned on them, and in so doing, had brought about the ruin of their once-great empire.
And yet…
He opened his eyes to find the woman staring at him aghast.
“What…? What just happened?” She looked so tired, but now her breath was coming in shallow, fast gasps, her body shaking. The child in her arms squirmed and fidgeted.
He rumbled quietly and opened his mouth, wondering if… “I mean you know harm,” he said, and she reeled back a pace or two.
“You can… talk?”
“All animals can talk,” he said. “Humans just cannot understand what they’re saying. And some have more interesting things to say than others. Crickets, for one, sing the most wonderful poetry, but eagles are far too full of themselves to have anything interesting to say.”
She covered her mouth with her spare hand and he thought she might pass out at any moment. “I never thought there would be… a dragon out here…” she hissed. “You’re supposed to be… extinct.”
“You are a long way from the nearest town,” he said, stretching out his wing to cover her, though it was already a little late for that. The forest had provided very little protection from the worsening weather during her search, and she was soaked through. “May I ask what you are doing all the way out here?”
She rolled her lovely eyes and her shoulders dropped, spine sagging. “I’ve lost everything,” she whispered. “I lost my job — I used to work as a scullery maid in the city, but when I had this little one —” she jostled the child gently and he burbled into her collar “— I was let go. I couldn’t even afford to rent a room, so I left Caerlon and travelled south before the winter set in. My sister’s married to a merchant in White Harbour. I was robbed for what little I had about ten miles back, and…” she finally broke down, head bowing under the weight of her strain. “I’ve got nothing,” she choked. “Then this one ran off while I was sleeping, and I’ve been looking for him for hours. Thank you for finding him. He’s… He’s the most precious thing in my life, and he’s all I’ve got left.”
“Now you have me,” the dragon said quietly and watched her face go from desperation to confusion.
“I… I don’t understand…”
He sighed. “When you touched me just then, did you feel something?”
Faintly, she nodded.
“Do you know the stories of the ones they called the Dragon Hearts?”
For a moment, she just continued to frown, but as some distant, long-forgotten kernel of memory unfurled in her mind, she laughed. “Those are just… fables…” she said. “No?”
“No. Dragon Hearts are as real as they ever were, though our two species almost never meet these days, and with good reason. We must be the first dragon and the first human to meet amicably in a thousand years.”
“I find out dragons are real on the same day I find out I’m some kind of mythical dragon rider?”
“You can understand me, can you not?” he said wryly, and when she simply stood there on the road in her sodden clothes beneath the shelter of his wing, he laughed quietly. “If there were another human here — aside from your young son of course — they would not be able to understand my speech. I am yours, human, as you are mine.”
“What… What does that mean?”
What did it mean?
A thousand years ago, it would have elevated her to a noble class of human and given her power and standing and wealth beyond the dreams of mortal men, but now, when dragons were still occasionally hunted for sport and working women who birthed children were dismissed from their posts…
“It means whatever you wish it to mean,” he said at last. “I have a warm home in the mountains. I guard an ancient hoard, as most of my remaining kin do, and you may find shelter and protection there for as long as you wish.” He blinked and watched that sink in. “I can fly you to the edge of the forest when you and your child have recovered your strength, and you may go about your life as if you had never met me.” Even saying it hurt him, but he would not let her think she had no choice.
She stood there and the child began to fuss and cry. “Shh, love,” she said, jogging him gently up and down, but it had little effect. “Do you… have food a human could eat?” she asked.
“If you don’t mind preparing it yourself,” he said. “Alas, my hands may be delicate enough to hold a child, but I fear I was not made for the careful preparation of food…”
She looked a little faint, but she nodded. “You swear we will be free to leave whenever we like?”
He sat back and brought his right hand to his heart, bowing his head. “I swear on my sacred fire,” he said, letting the scales on his belly and chest glow from the embers within him like a flame behind an alabaster carving. “On my life and on my soul. I will protect you and care for you both all the while you choose to stay with me, and when you wish to leave, I will take you safely wherever you wish to go.”
“Alright,” she nodded at last. “I’ll go with you.”
“We have no saddle or tack for me,” he said with a low, rumbling laugh. There was a dragon rider’s saddle among his hoard though, and his heart skipped a beat at the thought of perhaps wearing it one day with her. He chose to keep that to himself for the time being. “And I worry that you and your child are too tired to ride on my back. Will you let me carry you in my hands? The flight is not long, but I fear you will be cold.”
The child laughed all the way from meadow to mountaintop, and while the mother was quiet, he suspected she was not afraid.
She has a dragon’s heart after all, he mused as he glanced down.
He set them down on the stone promontory outside the carved entrance to his home and let them take it in. The rain had stopped and mist now raked its white fingers through the trees below, and she turned to look at him with a tiny spark in her eyes. “This is wonderful…”
His heart soared.
“I… I was expecting a cave, but…” she turned to take in the intricate patterns wrought in the stonework. “It’s like a city…”
“Wait til I show you the rest,” he said. “There are stairways and passages, small places I cannot go, but you are free to explore. Come…” and with that he folded his wings tightly against his body and walked through the archway, and for the first time in his life, he was not alone.
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